images from pop culture that frightened you as a child

(2) On Battle of the Planets, when they pulled off Zoltar's mask, it was "revealed" that he was a she (or was it?), and the Great Spirit thing came outta nowhere to save Zoltar's ass.

(3) Some really cheesy horror film, where this horseman comes out of nowhere and chops off some guy's head (you see the guy's shadow, and the head getting lopped off).

(4) Gene Simmons wasn't scary, just goofy.

(5) When I was seven and the NYCPD had just arrested Son of Sam (my grandmother made us stay up and watch this).

(6) Another NYC metro-area specific incident: "Chiller Theater" on Channel 11, with this hand (with six! fingers) sinking into quicksand just after grabbing each letter in the word "C-H-I-L-L- E-R" and some creepy voice going "Chiiiiiiillller! (Years later, I worked with a lady whose first name was Csilla [it's a Hungarian nane, if y'all care], who said she used to get teased in grade school because of "Chiller Theater").

Pop answer: I remember being very scared of Top of the Pops in the early/mid-seventies, I guess the bands must have been Led Zep, Deep Purple, etc etc. Actually, it was a combination of horror and abject revulsion. I was scared by the Sensational Alex Harvey band on the Old Grey Whistle Test, also.

The Mad Hatter in the batman telly series frightened me, dunno why. The surrealist paintings my parents insisted on hiring from the library (is that pop culture?)

I am yet to recover from any of the above.

Not pop culture, but my parents had a papier-mache lion's head in the house, which scared me. Also scary was dragon puppet my mother made; it kept me from going upstairs alone.

The evil doll Dido in 'A Candle in her Room' by Ruth M. Arthur;

The boulders with eyes in 'Marianne Dreams';

A woman in one of the Green Knowe books who turned down the last cake then made it slither across the table and into her handbag when the grandmother wasn't looking.

At primary school we were shown this TERRIFYING little UNESCO movie abt the scourge of leprosy in the third world, blimey. What I recall: small African kid wandering unaccompanied through gleaming hospital, opens door to see sisnister doctors operating: it was like Coma on the Congo. Needless to say I nevah gave a penny!!

That reminds me, Miss Havisham in the old B&W movie of 'Great Expectations.'

She terrified me.

'Johnny couldn't see the danger in flicking rubber bands. Now Johnny can't see at all.'

Ozzy Ozbourne, but now I wuv him (or at least Black Sabbath).

My sister and I also had a mad ritual of hiding behind the settee when Morph threw a tin of paint at the camera at the beginning of every episode.

Pop culture in the North = ACE!

In primary school (aged 5-6 maybe) on more than one occasion several classes were for no particular reason were dragged to the school hall to watch this video (NB there were video players in the classrooms) called, I think, The Gazump. It was a poorly drawn cartoon about a big brown slug-thing that went around swalling ("gazumping") things. I think it was the sound of the word that scared me most, and it was said repeatedly. Gazump. Gazump. Gazump.

I remember overhearing this horrible (NB v.horrible, don't read on) Radio 4 story about a prince who was into thinking so decided he didn't need a body, so got the palace rats to eat it. He then decided he didn't need a head either, so got the rats to eat that, leaving only his brain, which the maids decided was a shrivelled prune and threw away. Yuk.

also, the abcs spelled out in fireworks on sesame street.

http://www.zipposcircus.co.uk/photos/photnor.htm

Still going

Sweet. Norman Barrett is Rock and Roll.

His budgie show is still flippin' dire though.

I don't get the budgie hate. I also keep thinking about Freddy Parrot Face Davies. 70s TV could sustain 2 budgie acts, apparently. (Insert Adam Faith joke here.)

This thread is making me really sad now for the days when Blackpool was the most magical place in the universe before it got ruined by pissed-up scum.

-- Noodle Vague, Monday, 21 May 2007 08:33 (1 hour ago) Link

When would this have been? About the 1890s?

Blackpool was still lovely in the 70s you heathen.

I prefer Greenwich.

I mean people were pissed-up, no doubt, but they weren't scum. Last time I went was 2001 and it broke my heart.

Oh yes, I went to a wedding in Blackpool in the early 1970s and my family still talk about it as the most drunken time they ever had ever. And they liked a drink. Freud wrote of Blackpool "I would sooner live there than here (Vienna) rain, fog, drunkenness and conservatism notwithstanding,". Probably.

Blackpool has always been full of drunks but that doesn't stop it being magical. Kids still love it.

Also - 2001! It's all changed since then, they've got new rides and everything.

I think I'm just mourning my childhood.

The first episode of "The Changes" - people going mad and smashing up TVs, cars, and anything else technological, then the main character (a little girl) becoming separated from her parents as they tried to flee London.

When Prince Adam turned into He-Man, my 3 year old self thought he was being set on fire!

Think someone already said Pink Floyds the Wall. But in particular, the marching hammers. And there was a section on the Another Brick video showing a playground with the hammers marching in the background.

As a kid I actually thought that whole album was just about school, with all the Scarfe artwork on the sleeve being of different types of teachers.

Rofl at myself

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=ak3z2Pm7Iwg

The video for Tom Petty's Don't Come Around Here No More scared the bejeezus out of me - especially the scene of Alice-as-cake with slices being taken out of here abdomen.

Also: The Dumbo pink elephants; the yup-yup bugs from Sesame Street; various Scooby-Doo monsters; and, on down the road a bit, the Shining twins (which, unbeknownst to my parents, I caught on television way too early in life)

http://www.mexicanpictures.com/headingeast/images/abominable.jpg

Two things spring to mind.

1. As a hyperactive child, growing up during the mid-late seventies in the UK I would get up very early in the morning and turn on the tv even though there was nothing actually broadcasting, and this used to scare the hell out of me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMrbxYrMmOc

And I can see judging by the comments I was not alone, I think part of the reason was that it used to just cycle around and around.

There would be a couple of minutes of silence and then that awful jingle, then nothing, then the jingle again until some smooth BBC voice would announce a programme.

When I first heard the Conet Project I recognised some of that uneasiness in the signifying jingles they used on some numbers stations.

2. The last four minutes of Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds, absolutely trouser threateningly horrible to a 5 year old.

I can see what you mean about the Open University thing.

There were a few things which used to terrify me when I was a little 'un in the early 70s. Firstly, those trade test transmission things that would be broadcast on ITV in the mornings, telling you about work that was being done to transmitters in Chorley or whatever - I seem to remember they had graphics of transmitters and a big IBA logo (could be wrong) and it all seemed technical and scary. They really did my head in.

And another one - my parents had a Music For Pleasure album of "Peter and the wolf" and the album cover gave me nightmares. It was this bloke (the narrator) sitting behind a papier mache display of the story - animals, woods, wolf etc. Something about the look on the man's face and the music itself did it for me. Even now, I've got the main theme going through my head and it's sending shivers down my spine - that was very strange music for kids. A few years ago, I found a copy of this album in a charity shop and bought it. Haven't played it though - still too scared.

Finally, on a side issue, does anyone know where I can get a full version of "Bart" by Ruby? For people of a certain age, it's a very evocative piece of music. Ah, schools and colleges...

the OU thing is like something out of the prisoner

I can see what you mean about the Open University thing.

I can't. It's quite calming.

Isn't there another thread like this, where recently people were talking about that woman getting turned into a robot in Superman 3?

various Scooby-Doo monsters

I was so scared of Scooby-Doo that I would scream whenever it came on tv.

Also, I made my mom leave the theater during Ghostbusters beacuse I couldn't handle it. I was 7!

I was also scared of the United Artists logo and the way it slowly, painstakingly turned to reveal its full-frontal view to the audience.

― roxymuzak (roxymuzak), Sunday, April 17, 2005 8:32 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://i.imgur.com/LvSjhJM.jpg

Go ahead. Click on that.

outstanding thread

visually
- commercial for that beauty and the beast tv show that involved someone hallucinating spiders in a baby’s crib
- the bike/clowns scene in pee wee’s big adventure
- Nick at Nite commercial for I Love Lucy reruns that played creepy theramin music while showing various clips of Lucy pulling weird faces. I love this show but this commercial freaked me out.

musically:
- the intro to “tusk”
- the Todd rundgren song “lockjaw”

I’ve been a real shitstick on ilx this morning so that’s it for me today <3

Now that I think of it, there was this opera-singing orange on Sesame Street that got to me at a tender age.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, December 4, 2001

This always creeped me out.

Also: the martians in the Martian Chronicles tv adaptation... there was one with a v-shaped mask that I found especially frightening for some reason.

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman used to creep me out ...

when I was a kid there was this commercial that used to play all the time about meth addiction, it was a black and white video of a woman who looked normal at first, until she started taking off her makeup and hair and false teeth, at which point she looked haggard and disfigured, I also remember the music which I think was "Overcome" by Tricky. can't find any record of this online which is fine because I remember it scaring the shit out of me

https://mikeladano.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/sam_2197.jpg

Lots of good examples on this long-running site:

https://www.kindertrauma.com/

Faces at the window at night--particularly the glowing eyes in a commercial for the original Amityville Horror, or an alien looking through a prison window in some Outer Limits episode. I would avoid looking at window at night for years.

I was a major wuss though; I was too scared to ride The Haunted Mansion when I was maybe 10.

Mention of Phantom of the Paradise upthread suddenly brought to mind a shot in the commercial where somebody is just about to get their head crushed in a record pressing machine.

I also couldn't handle gore of any kind until I was in my 30s. The Monty Python Salad Days sketch terrified me. Into my 20s I would make my friends tell me where the bloody bits were in movies so I wasn't caught off guard.

I bought a book in my teens called Movie Fantastic which was mostly photos from sci-fi and monster movies but which included a frame grab from Un Chein Andalui of the razor through the eyeball! Auuuggghhh!! Eventually I managed to glue the page shut without looking at it again.

I had repeating nightmares where I would be watching a gory movie and no matter how I covered my eyes or turned away, I could still see it.

"Lots of good examples on this long-running site:"

"https://www.kindertrauma.com/";

My best friend from high school runs this site. He's the best. We had a store together in Philly in the 90s called REDRUM.

Faces at the window at night--particularly the glowing eyes in a commercial for the original Amityville Horror, or an alien looking through a prison window in some Outer Limits episode. I would avoid looking at window at night for years.

Once, when I was five or six, me, my sister and another pair of siblings stayed at this house with a babysitter while our parents went out on a double date or something.

Apparently, some friends of the babysitter came over and with them, some of their ne'er-do-well teenaged boyfriends who were trying to spook them a little.

I slept through it all, but the next day, I remember my mother telling the other mother that a boy with red hair had popped up in one of the windows and scared one of the teenaged girls.

I didn't associate this with the typical auburn or even orangish shade of what we call a redhead. Instead, I pictured a teenaged boy with a full head of BOZO HAIR.

And that's just one of the kindertraumas I carry with me to this day.

The Raw Power album cover

The original westworld movie poster / face coming off the robot

"The Masks" episode of the original Twilight Zone

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/643/f58/b801d0c0b8e7bae8d7475b38c5dea96d71-24-masks-twilight-zone.rsocial.w1200.jpg

“The Keeper” episode of Lost In Space

and the lobster man from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

The opening sequence of Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky (1977) haunted me for months when I was about 7 or 8 years old, so much so I couldn't watch the rest of the film. The specific image which freaked me out is below

https://i.ibb.co/Xj953Jq/jabberwocky.jpg

Made the mistake of watching this as an 8 or 9-year-old and it's never left me, ugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE8oWEq2c6M

somehow as a small child I always managed to find and watch random age-inappropriate horror movies

the dead woman in the rocking chair in Black Sabbath kept me wide awake for many nights

I don't remember a particular scene, but the titular being of The Creeping Flesh seemed exceptionally awful

maximum trauma points go to Five Million Years to Earth, the US release of Hammer's Quatermass and the Pit, especially for the poltergeist events and telepathic visions of ancient Martian massacres ... things have never really been the same since I ran across that one

Tevye's Dream from Fiddler on the Roof scared the shit out of me, I couldn't go near piles of leaves for years after seeing this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o2gISJYwQU

1. The intro music to Doctor Who

2. The I-beam segment on Sesame Street

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49FBci5D7Ik

3. The Supreme Being in Time Bandits

4. Movie posters for “Deepstar Six” (sea monster) and “Scandal” (scary naked woman)

Ear worms from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

After I was terrified from watching the movie:

Me: [upset] Why did you let me watch this scary movie?

Parents: You begged us to let you watch it.

Me: You are the adults, you're supposed to know better!

The mom's violent enemas in Sybil (which was a TV movie!!) Absolutely had nightmares with her in them.

TV movies responsible for a lot of this. I vaguely remember "David" (1988) being on at a sitter's or something. "The true story of David Rothenberg, whose disturbed father set him on fire." ... what were they thinking with some of this stuff???

I was terrified by a trailer for the Salem's Lot tv series which showed the vampire's face.

https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1568957688ra/28174629.gif